ST. PAUL, Minnesota -- I don't imagine Steve Tambellini's flight had been on the tarmac for very long when his phone started ringing. I don't expect it'll stop until he selects Ryan Nugent-Hopkins with the first pick of the 2011 NHL Entry Draft Friday.

The rumour mill has kicked into high gear and the Oilers are front and centre in many of them. Players from Sheldon Souray, Ryan Smyth, Ales Hemsky, Sam Gagner and either of their first rounders have been thrown around, but right now it seems more fiction than fact.

Yesterday’s Ryan Smyth rumours took OilersNation by storm: here and elsewhere, Oilers fans voiced overwhelming approval for the idea of Smyth’s return. As of this writing, the poll on the right shows somewhere in the neighborhood of 94% of Oilers fans favour some kind of trade with Los Angeles; only 3% dismissed the deal outright.

I want to point you all in the direction of a fantastic bit of research written last week by CIS Blogger and math graduate Rob Pettapiece. Rob expands on research he did into the CHL draft and found that players born earlier in the year were more likely to get drafted than players born later in the year. He divided the players into four camps, 'Q1' through 'Q4' and concluded that, since there were 4.3 times more Q1 players drafted, there are teams that make decisions, particularly in the late rounds, based on player size and strength rather than observable skill.

"If you’re down to “projectability” at that point, rather than stats and performance, then fine, pick the tallest kid if you have no other information about them."